New Movements in Artistic Portraits for 2026

In this group of artists, intimacy, memory and abstraction converge in various ways, however all share a sensitivity to the short lived: the overlooked image, the half-remembered place, the unsteady border in between what we see and what we feel. Together, they form a peaceful but insistent meditation on how suggesting builds up in normal life.

Taken together, rendered in her distinctive painterly design, these retellings of easily-forgotten minutes show how a regular life, when taken a look at from a specific point of view, begins to radiate a palpable sense of significance.Rosemary Burn Bowl of cherries, 2025 Mona Sultan's photocollages describe the fragmentary nature of memory and meaning, calling photographic reality into question by breaking down, recontextualising and repeating images. Stabilizing methodical accuracy with a noticeably human, necessarily imperfect visual sensibility, his paintings are easy going abstractions for the digital age.Luke Rudolf Fizzog 4, 2025 Jo Berry's airbrushed paintings provide physical forms to images that we generally see through a screen andrapidly forget, such as stock photos and ReCAPTCHAs. To me, her distinct language hazy, misshaped, discreetly upsetting reflects the alienation and dissociation intrinsic in a world filled with imagery that appears to appear and disappear ever-more rapidly. A shadow, a handstand, a sheer curtain draped over a houseplant: by photographing such things, he provides them a 2nd life in which they end up being permanent. Emile Kees Handstand, 2023 Jo Hummel's minimalist abstractions have a specific ahistorical quality; they link several histories of product experimentation and creation from worldwide within an unique visual language. They locate the viewer within landscapes that feel unlimited with a low mist hanging over the horizon. Though unfamiliar, these images are deeply peaceful, inviting you to revel in the simple satisfaction of a perpetually twilit, pastoral world.Llus-Carles Peric Cap a La Calma, 2014 The scenes that Bianca MacCall paints a train window reflecting the carriage's interior over the passing landscape; a barely-visible cars and truck concealed by an ochre-yellow curtain seem intentionally mysterious. They make me believe about the synchronised absurdity and appeal of the world in front of me, considering familiar scenes through an unknown lens. Bianca MacCall Continuous Movement, 2023 Henry Ward's painting practice is ever-shifting. In truth, if you stand in front of among his paintings for long enough, you might see it alter in genuine time. The unsettled, unforeseeable nature of his work is what makes me keep going back to it.Henry Ward Bethany III, 2023.